We are an boutique private-label MySQL consulting, support and remote DBA services provider with core expertise in performance, scalability and high availability. Our elite-class MySQL consulting team is available across multiple timezones 24*7*365 and worked for more than 100 customers worldwide. MinervaSQL is founded by Shiv Iyer, A longterm MySQL expert with keen interests on web-scale database performance, scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, SRE and DevOps.

What we have to keep in mind for an Optimal MySQL Performance ? There are many, I am just writing down what I seriously consider for an Optimal and Scalable MySQL Performance, As you usual the comments are most welcome, Thank you !!

Go generous while buying physical memory, InnoDB works great when files are accessed from memory rather than from disk.

Lean MySQL Schema and SQL works great. Trust me, The fat is not Optimal everywhere !!

Archive the old records, They make Sort / Search especially very expensive.

Profile your MySQL regularly to define the trending chart of Performance, Nothing goes wrong overnight, Performance degradation happens in several cases over a period of time so think proactive, That's cool :)

The fat multi-core processors hyper-threading enabled works great for high performance MySQL operations

Watch out for excessive pagination queries.

Go conservative about MySQL Configs (sometimes less is more).

Be cautious with MySQL configuration parameters innodb_thread_concurrency and thread_concurrency variables, Don't use them if you don't clearly understand how they work !!

High max_connections excessively consumes the RAM.

Use query cache only if you have repetitive queries, Using query cache on data that changes often will give you a performance hit.

Remember to warm your MySQL Database in every restart, This get schema, SQL back to memory.

Fetch only the data you need in SELECT queries

Consider persistent connection against multiple connections

Sort_buffer_size eat memory very fast because it is actually consumed per connection so please be very cautious while increasing it.

Use large redo logs

Measure cost of query with Response Time, Use MySQL slow query log to diagnose query performance.

I use SHOW PROCESSLIST while load increases, This works good for me during diagnostics / forensics of slow queries.

Use Performance Schema wisely, This is an great MySQL performance orchestration platform.

Avoid using Triggers as much as possible.

Use ARCHIVE Storage engine for audit purposes.

You need Backups but do that on a secondary Replication Instance, This actually is a quick win to boost the Performance of your MySQL Primary Master Instance.

Introduction
What is it like being a MySQL DBA? It is interesting and challenging! A MySQL DBA is accountable equally for technology and business operations. Everyone agrees the accountability for technology operations but few asked my how on business operations? I am explaining here in this post how MySQL DBAs can equally create business value? A serious MySQL DBA is never the career for someone who is looking for 40 hours / week job, It is a very demanding profession! MySQL DBA is accountable for entire MySQL Infrastructure Operations , It includes but not limited to responsibilities like Architecture, Engineering, MySQL Operations Monitoring / Trending, Performance Health Check / Diagnostics / Forensics, Tuning , Scalability, High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Upgrades. Recently a college graduate who want to pursue the career of MySQL DBA approached me asking what is it like the life of an MySQL DBA? So I thought let's write a post about the life of an MySQL DBA!!

What will be the profile of MySQL DBA?
A true MySQL DBA is an courageous problem solver, At times he/she is expected to remain calm and address the problem than getting sensitive/emotional (many times I was called for emergency support during personal vacations, I am ok with it because it's the nature of my Job!! ) because anything happen to MySQL Infrastructure you will be blamed (even when it's not your mistake) so be cool and never ever get into panic/anxiety situation (practice meditation & yoga, It will support you at personal level during turbulence) with any level of odd experience in your MySQL Operations, Expect the worst and be prepared for it ! Remember Murphy's law "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong ! " . Now on technical competency front every MySQL DBA is expected to know MySQL Architecture, MySQL Operations Management (Monitoring & Trending), MySQL Troubleshooting, MySQL Performance, MySQL High Availability and Disaster Recovery. Thankfully MySQL ecosystem is rich when it comes to knowledge sharing and support. Percona's investments in MySQL research and innovation made MySQL DBA ecosystem more stronger and healthy ! The following are few books (must have) in every MySQL DBA library:

What makes you The Expert MySQL DBA ? Practice, Practice & More Practice over multiple MySQL (MySQL GA, Percona Server, WebScaleSQL and MariaDB) infrastructure and continuous learning is key! MySQL DBAs need to automate their routine tasks to find more time for learning, community contributions and attending MySQL events (You can learn a lot from these events from peers & experts !). Be open to learn from every MySQL flavour (MySQL GA, Percona Server, WebScaleSQL and MariaDB) available this get you to be an unbiased MySQL advocate. Take the full ownership of your MySQL Infrastructure like Performance, Scalability, High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Security because strategically/economically it never make sense for hiring multiple MySQL DBAs for addressing different areas of MySQL Operations! Last but not the least never limit your scope to just MySQL because most of MySQL implementations are on Linux, Good understanding of Linux Operations comes handy many times in your career so please do some investments for learning Linux!!!

Where do I start my career as MySQL DBA?
Once you have basic knowledge in MySQL DBA Operations, Start actively networking with MySQL DBA Managers and Database Architects. The initial days please don't expect challenging opportunities, There is nobody in this planet who risk their mission critical MySQL database with junior DBA(s) ! The early days of your career sometimes will be limited to assisting Principal / Sr. MySQL DBAs but this will give you access to experience/knowledge of someone who is working with MySQL production infrastructure for many years. The early days of your career as Jr. MySQL DBA is very important because it equally provide to guidance and practice governance in MySQL Operations Management successfully. You must never get bored doing repetitive tasks initial years !!

What does MySQL consultant career path look like?
The value of MySQL consultant grows higher with more years of experience and volume/transaction of MySQL database he/she managed. If you have entrepreneurial interests the independent MySQL contractor (I am an independent MySQL contractor for many years) is very promising, exciting and rewarding!

How MySQL DBAs can equally create business value
Faster, Scalable & Highly Available MySQL infrastructure is very important for successfully running planet-scale Internet/Mobility Application or SaaS. Think about "Cost-To-MySQL-Outage" for an online commerce or advertisement network business? A seasoned MySQL DBA should proactively plan Optimal, Scalable, Highly Available and Secured MySQL Operations to address customer experience & revenue!

So have you decided to be a MySQL DBA?
Good luck !! Start your learning with an positive mind and spend all your productive hours in reading the research & experience of many professional MySQL consultants (there are many available in public domain already!)

Generally we have two kinds of numbers, Whole numbers and real numbers (numbers with Fractional units). When we are using whole numbers the natural choice is TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT and BIGINT. These datatypes require 8,16,24,32,64 bits of storage space accordingly.MySQL allows you to specify “width” of integer types, like INT(25). This doesn’t mean /restrict legal range of values but actually specifies the number of characters MySQL’s interactive tools will reserve for display purposes, INT(1) is same as INT(20) for storage and computational purposes. Real numbers can have both fractional and decimal numbers which are very large and don’t fit in “BIGINT”. The “FLOAT” and “DOUBLE” support approximate calculation with standard floating point math.The “DECIMAL” type is good for storing exact fractional numbers. From MySQL 5.0 and newer, the “DECIMAL” type support exact math! Due to lower precision level “FLOATING-POINT” used during MySQL 4.1 days used to give weird result..“FLOATING-POINT” math is much faster because CPU performs computations natively. “FLOATING-POINT” type typically use less space than “DECIMAL” to store same range of values. MySQL uses “DOUBLE” for its internal calculations on “FLOATING-POINT” types dues to its greater precision compared to “FLOAT"

Considering expensive computational cost you should choose “DECIMAL” only when you need exact results for fractional numbers, for example, financial data. It makes more sense to use “BIGINT” for high volume transactions which are not so critical or store them in multiples of smallest fractions of currency!

Introduction

Being an independent MySQL consultant is fun and equally challenging, I very regularly get the opportunity of doing low-level MySQL Performance Health Check, Diagnostics and Forensics. My customers equally are curious in knowing how optimal is their MySQL infrastructure ? Many times I have heard people defining “Performance” as executing queries optimally using minimum system resources! I contradict this thought by asking in return, If you have bought expensive high processing power infrastructure why not use it to maximum? At MinervaSQL we define performance as total time consumed to complete a task so for us Performance is Response Time . In real life this is very scalable method too because MySQL Server is busy executing queries and how much time consumed by each query leads us to Response Time and our goal remains reducing the Response Time , Here we measure where the time is consumed.This also brings most powerful principle of performance optimization “Things which cannot be measured can never be maximised !” . Measure where response time is spent and "never ever” aggregate here, target each query independently. Measure every slow query and monitor what is the impact in the server, Calculate percentage of time spend in waiting and executing of each query.

Profiling MySQL for Response Time

Accuracy of profiling is key in calculating Response Time, During profiling we measure where MySQL is spending time? In effect here we are measuring how much time is spend in execution ? and how much time spend by waiting ? When we are doing profiling of MySQL, There are two interesting matrices to notice:1. Queries are continuously executing using available infrastructure so this is execution time profiling 2. Queries are waiting for tasks to get completed or for resources , This is called wait time profiling Both of these above mentioned matrices are very important for us to measure the time spend by every query and the results will guide us to conclude where we should be spending time during tuning. I always list down the queries that can bring down big impact to MySQL performance, If a query consumes only 5% of total time of execution then tuning that specific query can gain only in 5% of improvement (Amdahl’s law)The "lost time” calculation during response time analysis is very important, It is total wall clock time went unaccounted during execution time. Let’s consider overall CPU time for execution of query is 60 seconds and profiling tools subtasks adds upto 50 seconds then “lost time” here is 10 seconds!When doing MySQL profiling two of my favourite tools are SHOW PROFILE (Jeremy Cole) and PT-QUERY-DIGEST of Percona Toolkit developed by Percona

Conclusion

I recommend my customers to collect the response time of each query and measure every single activity that consume time which include even application level response time, It is not just MySQL causes performance bottleneck every time and it’s very straightforward to diagnose whether MySQL is the problem.

I always thought of maintaining the checklist for MySQL Performance Optimization, This actually helps me to draw the first line of action items and developing scope at advanced stages.

Optimizing at the Database LevelThe most important factor in making a database application fast is its basic design:

Are the tables structured properly? In particular, do the columns have the right data types, and does each table have the appropriate columns for the type of work? For example, applications that perform frequent updates often have many tables with few columns, while applications that analyze large amounts of data often have few tables with many columns.

Are the right indexes in place to make queries efficient?

Are you using the appropriate storage engine for each table, and taking advantage of the strengths and features of each storage engine you use? In particular, the choice of a transactional storage engine such as or a nontransactional one such as can be very important for performance and scalability.

Does each table use an appropriate row format? This choice also depends on the storage engine used for the table. In particular, compressed tables use less disk space and so require less disk I/O to read and write the data. Compression is available for all kinds of workloads with tables, and for read-only tables.

Does the application use an appropriate locking strategy? For example, by allowing shared access when possible so that database operations can run concurrently, and requesting exclusive access when appropriate so that critical operations get top priority. Again, the choice of storage engine is significant. The storage engine handles most locking issues without involvement from you, allowing for better concurrency in the database and reducing the amount of experimentation and tuning for your code.

Are all memory areas used for caching sized correctly? That is, large enough to hold frequently accessed data, but not so large that they overload physical memory and cause paging. The main memory areas to configure are the buffer pool, the key cache, and the MySQL query cache.

Optimizing at the Hardware LevelAny database application eventually hits hardware limits as the database becomes more and more busy. A DBA must evaluate whether it is possible to tune the application or reconfigure the server to avoid these bottlenecks, or whether more hardware resources are required. System bottlenecks typically arise from these sources:

Disk seeks. It takes time for the disk to find a piece of data. With modern disks, the mean time for this is usually lower than 10ms, so we can in theory do about 100 seeks a second. This time improves slowly with new disks and is very hard to optimize for a single table. The way to optimize seek time is to distribute the data onto more than one disk.

Disk reading and writing. When the disk is at the correct position, we need to read or write the data. With modern disks, one disk delivers at least 10–20MB/s throughput. This is easier to optimize than seeks because you can read in parallel from multiple disks.

CPU cycles. When the data is in main memory, we must process it to get our result. Having large tables compared to the amount of memory is the most common limiting factor. But with small tables, speed is usually not the problem.

Memory bandwidth. When the CPU needs more data than can fit in the CPU cache, main memory bandwidth becomes a bottleneck. This is an uncommon bottleneck for most systems, but one to be aware of.

Introduction

Being a Database Technology Specialist for almost 16 years I get to talk in several community conferences, colleges and startups, Recently I was talking about the career prospects of being a DBA in a college in Bangalore, India, I was talking about what is it like being a DBA? As usual by the end of the talk I encourage audience to ask questions and one of the very anxious attendees asked me a very interesting question, "What is it like being a DBA in future with rapid advancement in Automation and DevOps ?", The guy who asked me this question is a aspiring DBA and he was so worried about future ... so I thought let me write about this talk in my personal blog.

Where are we headed to in Technology Operations space ?

The days of Scaling Technology Operations with eyeballs are over !! Yes, Automation and DevOps are definitely a big threat for commodity DBAs, Commodity DBAs are the ones who are engaged with typical very-planned / documented DBA activities like Database Software installation, configuration, upgrades, user account / password management, adding / deleting spaces and planned routine backup / recovery operation. To be very brutally honest here, There are no jobs for them in the future!!! This doesn't mean there is no DBA jobs in the future, The specialist DBAs are more valued in the days to come !! Who are these specialist DBAs and how are they different from olden days commodity DBAs?

Next is "The Specialist DBA!!!"In the past many folks learn basic Database software installation and configuration claim to be a DBA, These guys are so limited with installation and configuration with some limited involvement in user account creation, password management and space allocation for schema / users. Now these are can be automated with DevOps tools or if you are on Amazon RDS most of the limited scope DBA activities are so well taken care of but can you be a serious corporation without hiring professional DBA ? Hmm.... If yes, You must read this post and I am sure in the end you will contact your recruiter to hire a DBA full-time / contract immediately and if no, You will enjoy reading this post and will be so proud about your decision of having a full-time / consulting DBA in your company.

You can only automate the well planned / scheduled activities with DevOps, RDS kind of platform but what about Performance Optimization of your Database System ? Writing High Performance SQL, Optimal Indexing and Managing Locks / Wait Events, What about these, Can you Automate them ? Surely not, Architecting and Developing High Performance Database Applications is a very specialized expertize, This involves deep understanding of Database Architecture, Internals, Optimizer Knowledge, High Performance SQL Patterns, Efficient Indexing Methods and Managing Concurrency / Locks / WaitEvents and you definitely need seasoned Database Technologies Professional to deliver Optimal and Scalable Database Platforms !!

The future of Specialist DBA is bright, Such DBAs are not just limited to your Operational Functions, They are involved in your Strategic Decision making like Technology Architecture and Engineering, These Specialist DBAs build / own Optimal SQL, Efficient Indexing and Concurrency / Isolation governance across the Database Tier of your business. I have come across Database Architecture and Engineering of several high profile Internet Application Platforms built by non professional dedicated DBAs, They will be often over / under Indexed with sub-optimal SQL and unaddressed concurrency / isolation level, This results in serious Performance and Scalability of the entire platform and eventually resulting negative business impact affecting experience of end customer (nobody want to wait 10 seconds for every page load !!! )..

What is recommended to become a successful Specialist DBA ?

Have deep understanding on Architecture and Internals of underlying Database Platform

Participate actively in every decision making because business is data and you are delivering infrastructure for data movement here, You are solely accountable for Optimal, Scalable, Highly Available and Secured Database Infrastructure

Be conscious about cost of SQL and Indexes for the application, Over indexing and complex SQL in production is never cool !!!

The computers and robots can never replace human expertize or specialized skills, They all exist just to simplify our activities and increasing efficiency. Believe in automation and be adaptable because it makes you more productive professionally. Think about how you can contribute to the business success and customer satisfaction, High Performance Database System significantly influence the end customer satisfaction, Eventually customer success is the only goal for every business in this planet, Good luck !!

MySQL 8 is incorporated with numerous features which excites all enthusiastic MySQL Database Architects / DBAs / Database Engineers / DBA Managers, I am attracted to few of them which will make my day-to-day MySQL 8 DBA life even more interesting:

MySQL Data Dictionary

In the past MySQL data dictionary was stored in metadata files and nontransactional tables but from MySQL 8 we have transactional data dictionary to store the information about database objects. The major difference between MySQL system tables and data dictionary tables is that system tables contain auxiliary data such as time zone and help information, whereas data dictionary tables contain data required to execute SQL queries. The dictionary data is now protected by the same commit, rollback, and crash-recovery capabilities that protect user data stored in InnoDB tables. This make MySQL data dictionary based object management more interesting.

MySQL 8 supports roles, They are collections of privileges which are granted to and revoked from user accounts. A much waited feature IMHO, Especially when I am working for customers who are serious about building secured privileges / policies across MySQL users, Eureka I have answer for all those folks now !!!

InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT

MySQL 5.7 and earlier, the auto-increment counter is stored only in main memory, not on disk. To initialize an auto-increment counter after a server restart, InnoDB would execute the equivalent of the following statement on the first insert into a table containing an AUTO_INCREMENT column. From MySQL 8 this behaviour has changed, The current maximum auto-increment counter value is written to the redo log each time it changes and is saved to an engine-private system table on each checkpoint. These changes make the current maximum auto-increment counter value persistent across server restarts. On a server restart following a normal shutdown, InnoDB initializes the in-memory auto-increment counter using the current maximum auto-increment value stored in the data dictionary system table. On a server restart during crash recovery, InnoDB initializes the in-memory auto-increment counter using the current maximum auto-increment value stored in the data dictionary system table and scans the redo log for auto-increment counter values written since the last checkpoint. This feature will increase performance of MySQL operations with several schema objects built with AUTO_INCREMENT counter.

Deadlock detection disabling

We can now dynamically set innodb_deadlock_detect in MySQL 8 which is used to disable deadlock detection. On high concurrency systems, deadlock detection can cause a slowdown when numerous threads wait for the same lock. After carefully evaluating the transaction behaviour of your application you can disable deadlock detection and rely on the innodb_lock_wait_timeout setting for transaction rollback when a deadlock occurs. I will be personally very careful using this feature, Good but too powerful too !

INNODB_CACHED_INDEXES

The INFORMATION_SCHEMA table, INNODB_CACHED_INDEXES, reports the number of index pages cached in the InnoDB buffer pool for each index. This really helps to measure index efficiency more proactively and I am sure this will help me a lot going forward !

Invisible indexes

MySQL 8 now support invisible index, These indexes are not used by optimizer at all but maintained normally like any other indexes, This enables Database Architects / DBAs / Database Engineers / DBA Managers to benchmark MySQL performance on what if any index is removed ? I personally love this feature and will be using this most often in real-life as a MySQL 8 DBA to decide the fate of indexes, Great feature to have !

Much better descending indexes

Yes, We have descending indexes in MySQL 5.7 but they are scanned reverse order which indeed causes performance bottleneck. MySQL 8 solved this problem, Now descending indexes can be scanned in forward order, which is much more performance conscious and optimal . The descending indexes also make it possible for the optimizer to use multiple-column indexes when the most efficient scan order mixes ascending order for some columns and descending order for others. I was waiting for this feature for several years and this will make sort / search of both ASC/DESC based queries equally efficient, Must use feature in MySQL 8 to make your application more index efficient.